Gartner's Top 10 Information Technology Predictions for 2009

the skills to change processes or understand how desired changes might affect others. Thus, the BPM principle that business managers and process participants can and should be able to change processes -- either changing the design, the instance, the data or the execution -- is very scary to many. This will not change unless business users are given and encouraged to use a business process "sandbox" -- a safe place in which to build their skills and test their ideas about which process needs more or less agility, where the flex point should be, what the effects are of one change versus another, how change affects process performance and process partners, and more.

In 2012, the major PC vendors will recycle only one PC for every five they ship. With ongoing PC market growth and strong adoption of mobile PCs, the volume of secondary PCs is accelerating. However, PC recycling is still highly dependent on government legislation and subsidies. Without subsidies, PC recycling is usually not profitable. Vendors have made some progress developing recycling schemes, but the volume of product they collectively take back is a fraction of the total they produce. The IT industry as a whole needs to do more, particularly as the PC is only one type of electronic waste. Actions might include auditing and publication of vendor recycling data, universal inclusion of recycling costs in the original cost of sale and, although deeply unpopular with the industry, research into how average lifecycles might be extended.

By 2012, 30 percent of mobile PCs sold in the worldwide consumer market will be priced at less than US$300. Low-cost PCs allow vendors to increase PC penetration in emerging markets across Asia Pacific, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa. The inclusion of wireless functionality for mobile Internet connectivity, when combined with growing availability of wireless infrastructure makes these devices attractive to telecommunications service providers, opening up a new distribution channel. According to Gartner, enterprises should also consider the possible uses of these devices and whether they enable new business opportunities. In any event, they should prepare to find individually purchased devices of this type being attached to the network by remote and mobile workers and revisit their security and management policies on non-corporate devices.

By year end 2013, 40 percent of enterprise knowledge workers will have abandoned or removed their desk phone. With complex desk phones costing several hundred dollars per unit, and growing moves toward remote workers, hotdesking and other business practices which unlink an individual from a fixed location, there are significant cost savings possible. There will be resistance from workers, especially the older and more traditionally minded, whose working practices are more centered around the desktop device which will prevent total elimination of the desk phone, but the trend is clear. According to Gartner, organizations should consider whether users need a desk phone and a mobile device and plan to reduce unnecessary expenses.

By the end of next year 2010, wireless operators will cease to offer unlimited (flat-rate) mobile data plans. Gartner warns that users must expect data throughput limitations on 3G to continue and plan mobile enterprise services accordingly. New bandwidth-intensive smart phones and mobile Internet devices are accelerating the demand for bandwidth, with devices like Apple's iPhone driving significant increases in mobile data usage. Networks are already hitting capacity and increased customer demand is impacting network availability and effective throughput. Mobile data services are already slowing down as carriers frequently fail to deliver on the promised speeds.

By year end 2012, physical sensors will create 20 percent of non-video Internet traffic. We are all familiar with CCTV systems for monitoring traffic movement, license plates and many other applications, but how about collecting data from the hard-disk shock sensors in your notebook to collect data to better understand earth tremors and earthquakes? The extent and diversity of real-time environmental sensing is growing rapidly as our ability to act on and interpret the growing volumes of data to capture valuable information increases. Gartner says organizations should consider how use of the growing volume of real-time data might create new business models and enable better informed business decision making.